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Monday, September 29, 2014

There's nothing like a road trip through small town Oregon in the summertime. And Settler was just the place to scrounge through a trunk in an antique shop full of all kinds of cool stuff. Guess what I found?! A leather-bound journal from the 19th century. I had to laugh at its contents, but it was good fun. Because it was full of craziness. But check it out. Here's an excerpt from a journal by someone named Cordelia Swit:

I'd been riding the stagecoach from Bend, Oregon, on my way to visit my cousin, Patrick Swit, in Settler. I saw the Gold and Swit Peaks in the distance and the Cascades beyond, and knew we were getting close. Mid May, it rained for most of the five hours we'd been on the rutted muddy trail.

I stared out at the high desert scrub, my head aching horribly from the constant bouncing and jostling. The danged Whip seemed to make no attempt at avoiding the potholes. You can bet I'd be making a complaint to the Stageline. I'd barely had time at the swing-station to relieve myself and grab a Johnny Cake from the station keeper.

While waiting for my cake to be wrapped, I peeked through the wall slats at the coachmen. They were definitely up to something. A battered trunk went in the boot and a strange looking box stowed under the Whip's seat. New men with shotguns positioned themselves atop the coach. Even more strange, they wore glowing green aviator goggles around their necks and tin foil hats. Then when being handed back into the coach, a young scoundrel opened my reticule and tucked something inside. Didn't he know that pickpockets took things, not gave them, for heaven's sake?

Once our journey recommenced, I opened my reticule and pulled out my 'gift.' A wad of paper contained something wrapped inside. I peeled the paper back to reveal a green crystal rock and leather-bound journal. My name, Cordelia Swit, was etched into the cover in fluorescent green. Strange, because I didn't keep a journal.

I must admit, the rock was breathtaking. I smoothed the paper it was wrapped in, a waybill I had seen inside but paid no mind to. I laughed when I read it. Dinosaurs and other such creatures on the loose. I ask you, who believed in that kind of ridiculous malarkey? Balderdash! And the journal was fast stuck together and wouldn't open. Curiouser and curiouser.

In all the dictionaries, I wasn't prepared for what came next. Creatures erupted from the wayside, in all the colors of the rainbow. Purple, red, and blue. Some with yellow eyes, others with pink. The hangers-on up topside began to shoot. The Whip sped up, cracking his reins for the horses to go faster. We raced through the turnpike and took the corner too fast. Next thing I knew, we rolled, over and over. When I came to, dust clouds still enshrouded the coach, and I lay on what was the ceiling. Creatures leaned in to search the interior. I was the only passenger to occupy the coach, yet they didn't seem to see me. I lay still, hardly daring to breathe, until they left.

I sat up gingerly, surprised to find I had no limbs or body. The shock sent me scrambling through the door and falling out onto the ground. The green rock once grasped in my palm fell onto the dirt. And then my limbs were back. I retrieved the rock and my body was gone once again. A magic rock of some sort that allowed me to disappear like a ghost. Did the young lad earlier know that I would need this?

The creatures were gone. The Whip and the riders once topside lie in death heaps. Well, I'd not scoff at the lad's gifts again. I retrieved my reticule, leather-bound journal and ghost rock and made my way toward the town. I stayed for the rest of my days. Became the town librarian. And joined The Rifters.

And look at this! I'm pretty sure this is the remains of the wagon that Cordelia left behind that day.

Photo by M. Pax

And then we saw something that made me think that maybe, just maybe... there was some truth to Cordelia's crazy journal story...

Sculpture & photo by Kirk Chapman

Sculpture & photo by Kirk Chapman

﻿

(NOTE: This post is in participation of M. Pax's release of The Rifters and the fictional town Settler where it takes place. The Rifters is available for free. The second book in the series, The Initiate, will be available October 20, 2014. It’s up for preorder for a special price at iTunes, Amazon, and Nook. Check HERE for links. Giveaways and events are ongoing through October 31, 2014. Check HERE for details.)

The Gold Rush trickles to a
fool’s quest and a string of stagecoach heists. In 1888, Earl Blacke decides to
make a new start and become a better man. He escapes into the mountains, heading
north. In the wilds of Oregon, a rift inside an ancient volcano opens and sends
him into the future, into the present day. It also shaves forty years off his
age, forty years to live over again and atone for what he’s done.

Starting
over is hard to do. In current day New York, Daelin Long’s dream job at a
publishing house goes the way of the dinosaurs her sister chases. With no money
and nowhere else to go, Daelin accepts the librarian position in her sister’s
dinky town in the middle of Oregon. Nestled inside ancient volcanic peaks, the
town of Settler holds onto many secrets. Residents roam the streets with weirdly
fashioned devices, and odd lights pulse in the night skies. People whisper of a
phantom outlaw and start dying, murdered and missing their heads. On top of it
all, Daelin’s sister is missing, and Daelin doesn’t know who to
trust.

Earl
knows more than he’s saying. He shares a notorious history with the phantom, one
he’ll see remains buried. Keeping Daelin’s sister’s secrets is his only chance
at redemption, and the only way to keep this world safe.

(This post is in participation of M. Pax's release of The Rifters and the fictional town Settler where it takes place. The
Rifters is
available for free. The second book in the series, The
Initiate, will
be available October 20, 2014. It’s up for preorder for a special price at iTunes, Amazon, and Nook. Check HERE for
links. Giveaways and events are ongoing through October 31, 2014. Check
HERE for
details.)

M. Pax is author of the space
adventure series The
Backworlds, plus other
novels and short stories. Fantasy, science fiction, and the weird
beckonsto her, and she blames Oregon, a
source of endless inspiration. She docents at Pine Mountain Observatory in the
summers as a star guide, has a cat with a crush on Mr. Spock, and is slightly
obsessed with Jane Austen. Learn more at mpaxauthor.com.

An Excerpt from The Rifters:

Earl’s vigil ended. His
girl came home. It had to be her. He stood, ready to run down into the clearing
and embrace her, but the angle of the head gave him pause. Silhouetted by the
blue energy, the arrival had a long beak. Yes, a beak. Definitely not
Charming.

“No.” Earl slumped to the
ground and scrambled behind a boulder. Once concealed from the visitor below, he
raised his binoculars.

The figure came into focus
illuminated by the moon and the rift. It wore a mask with goggles over its beak.
Green mist poured out of it in a breathing rhythm, and it had the tail of an
eel. The thing stood like a human with two arms and two legs in the usual
places. It set down a gyroscope, a metal orb of rings, some full rings, some
partial, before the gateway. The gyroscope spun, siphoning energy from the
pillars, energy reaching for a crystal in its center. It spun faster, faster,
faster until the crystal began to glow. A disturbing shade of
green.

The beaked thing from the
rift shrieked, which came out as a bubbly burp, an odd sound to go with an odd
sight. It kept burping, stopping periodically to sniff at the wind. It continued
with its strange behavior until the moon started to set, which deepened the
shadows of night, stretching them to distorted patches.

The clues are limited, but it’s clear that the one common factor is Gertrude’s Garden, the nightclub social center of the spirit community which just happens to adjoin the Sabrina Shores cemetery: the one place Indigo makes a point of not going. Ever. She has her reasons.

Indigo Eady:

Much to her chagrin, Indigo Eady is a celebrity among spirits. She’s the girl who can see and speak with them. She has a proven track record in helping spirits find their murderers, so it’s no surprise when she’s drafted onto the Missing Paranormal Committee. Who better to help them than the experienced teenage ghost whisperer- investigator and her friends?

Then, two more weeks on October 20th is the release of book III, Secret Keepers - still need hosts for book III!

Giveaways!

Everyone who comments here or at any of the stops during my Afterlife Blog Tour will be put into a drawing for FREE ebooks of Second Death, Ghostly Gallows and Secret Keepers. Five copies will be given away during the two week release period of each book.

Everyone who leaves a review of any book in the Afterlife series by October 31, 2014 will be put in a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card.

Everyone who purchases the complete ebook set or boxed ebook collection set by the end of the Afterlife blog tour (by October 31, 2014) will be put in a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card (boxed ebook set available October).

A print book giveaway of the series will also be up for grabs - stay tuned for more details!

Send your purchase links with the heading "AFTERLIFE" in the subject line to GwenMGardner@cox.net to be entered into the drawings.

Monday, September 15, 2014

I'm so happy to have M. Pax as my guest today. Mary has two new books coming from a new series, but today she's talking about The Rifters - and ghosties! And you know how I love my ghosties! SQUEEEE! *clamps hand over mouth* Oops, sorry. That just slipped out. But you're going to love this.

And hereeeeee's Mary!

George “Haw Shot” Hawley

Strange creatures, the stranger the better, fascinate
me. I loved Relic for that reason and
I loved the interesting creatures Cheri Reich dreamed up for Reborn. Beasts can make a world come alive
for me, i.e., Dragon Riders of Pern.

Gwen writes about great ghosts with pasts getting
them stuck in the present... well, in haunting the present.

George “Haw Shot” Hawley is a ghost with a twist. I
based him slightly on fact and slightly on fiction. One of the main characters
in The Rifters was a real outlaw. So
I did a lot of research and ran across this guy: C.B. Hawley (18??-1882) -
An outlaw, Hawley confessed to stage robbery in 1882 near Globe, Arizona
and was lynched. Index
of American Outlaws

Hanging was a common sentence in the old days,
whether by proper sentence or mob. It also wasn’t uncommon for the head to come
off during hanging. “Black Jack” Tom Ketchum was the last man to hang in
America in 1901, because hangings often went wrong. Tom ended up in three
pieces. more
info

Sounds like a reason to be a ghost with a thirst for
vengeance to me. The C in CB stood
for Charles. I already had a Charles old west outlaw, so I renamed him George
and moved him to Nevada.

George uses my other outlaw to murder townspeople and
steal their heads. The heads give him more powers, because he’s not a normal
ghost. He’s possessed by another creature from the rift using him for its
nefarious purposes.

Rifters blurb:

The Gold Rush trickles to a fool’s quest and a string
of stagecoach heists. In 1888, Earl Blacke decides to make a new start and become
a better man. He escapes into the mountains, heading north. In the wilds of
Oregon, a rift inside an ancient volcano opens and sends him into the future,
into the present day. It also shaves forty years off his age, forty years to
live over again and atone for what he’s done.

Starting over is hard to do. In current day New York,
Daelin Long’s dream job at a publishing house goes the way of the dinosaurs her
sister chases. With no money and nowhere else to go, Daelin accepts the
librarian position in her sister’s dinky town in the middle of Oregon. Nestled
inside ancient volcanic peaks, the town of Settler holds onto many secrets.
Residents roam the streets with weirdly fashioned devices, and odd lights pulse
in the night skies. People whisper of a phantom outlaw and start dying,
murdered and missing their heads. On top of it all, Daelin’s sister is missing,
and Daelin doesn’t know who to trust.

Earl knows more than he’s saying. He shares a
notorious history with the phantom, one he’ll see remains buried. Keeping
Daelin’s sister’s secrets is his only chance at redemption, and the only way to
keep this world safe.

Take advantage of the preorder special on book 2, The Initiate. Only 99 cents via preorder
from Amazon, iTunes, B&N, and Googleplay. Preorder

Author Bio:

Fantasy, science fiction, and
the weird beckons to her, and she blames Oregon, a source of endless
inspiration. She docents at Pine Mountain Observatory in the summers, and one
of her cats has a crush on Mr. Spock. You can find out more by visiting her
website: mpaxauthor.com

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Today is Insecure Writers Support Group day. The first Wednesday of every month is when we post about our insecurities and concerns as writers, receive and offer support. If you want to join, click HERE. Thanks so much to Alex Cavanaugh and his helpers who manage this event every month.

I'm releasing my Afterlife series. The first novella, Second Death, will be released on September 22nd, then the other two in October. All three are written, edited and formatted. I'm waiting on one more cover to be completed. I'm on top of it. Second Death is even up for pre-order.

What's my insecurity?

It's the blog tour. I've toned it down because I don't want to stress myself out since the day job that pays the bills really takes a lot out of me. I've barely asked for any hosts (asking for help has always been a problem for me), since I know I can rely on my buddies in my Untethered Realms group to host me. That's the good part.

The insecure part is writing posts for the blog tour. I tend to go with character-based posts, fun and quirky (according to me) rather than the serious. What if the posts are dumb? What if people (hosts) think they're too silly. And *gasp!* what if readers (bloggers) find them boring? What if I tank? What if people don't comment because...all of the above?

Monday, September 1, 2014

On Personal Stuff
I have a four day weekend! WooHoo! I'm so excited. It's like having two weekends in a row (because that's how my crazy mind breaks things down. LOL! ).

Also, the hubs and I are talking seriously about a vacation. It's been about seven years since we've had a real vacation. The last time was three weeks in Europe - England, France, Italy. This time, we're talking about maybe ten days in England (on a shoestring budget and frequent flyer mileage) - London and Yorkshire and the Cotswolds. Probably in November, because we're those crazy people who really love winter. Fog and drizzle and a cozy English pub? Yes, please!
Plus, hehe, I'm thinking of setting my next series in London ;)On Pre-Ordering

I downloaded Second Death (novella #1) for pre-order on Amazon. It's a new feature that indie authors/publishers now have access to. A lot of people are wondering how it works. It was simple and painless. Just a matter of clicking a button saying it's a pre-order, clicking another button advising it's not the final version (if your manuscript isn't completely ready yet - mine's in proofing), then entering in the release date.

You do have to click the box acknowledging that if the final version isn't downloaded ten days prior to release that you're banned from doing pre-orders for a year. Don't know what that's about...

So once a reader clicks the pre-order button at Amazon, they receive an email informing them that the book will be automatically sent to their Kindle on release day. You're not charged until the ebook is delivered. Easy Peasy.

I'm plugging along getting my Afterlife novella series ready for publishing. Did a little change up. Since there are three novellas I decided not to make a big production out of the cover reveal process. That'd just be a lot of space-hogging on people's blogs to do separate cover reveals and then releases so close together. Also, less work and less stress for me.

Kudos to Corona Zschusschen for the excellent illustrating and cover work. I highly recommend her!

AND NOW....

HERE IT IS!

Second Death:The Sabrina Shores spirit community
is in crisis.

Ghosties are mysteriously disappearing
at an alarming rate.

They’re simply…gone. A second death.

The clues are limited, but it’s
clear that the one common factor is Gertrude’s Garden, the nightclub social
center of the spirit community which just happens to adjoin the Sabrina Shores
cemetery: the one place Indigo makes a point of not going. Ever. She has her
reasons.

Indigo Eady:

Much to her chagrin, Indigo Eady is
a celebrity among spirits. She’s the girl who can see and speak with them. She
has a proven track record in helping spirits find their murderers, so it’s no
surprise when she’s drafted onto the Missing Paranormal Committee. Who better
to help them than the experienced teenage ghost whisperer- investigator and her
friends?

So, here's the new schedule:

9/22/14 Second Death release

10/6/14 Ghostly Gallows release

10/20/14 Secret Keepers

Now this is much tidier!

Let me know if you'd be interested in hosting me and what sort of post you're interested in.

I'm starting to work on tour posts now.

On Reviews
If you want to review my novellas, let me know and I'll send you ARCs. Even though each is a standalone of about 20K, you should probably read them in order.

On Untethered Realms
The authors over at Untethered Realms are cranking out the books! This is just September. Wait until you see our scheduled book releases for October!

M. Pax will be releasing Rifters on 9/8/14. She'll be here on my blog on 9/15/14.

Gwen Gardner (yeah, it's me!) is releasing Second Death on 9/22/14.

Kitsy Clare, aka our own Catherine Stine has a book coming out on 9/29.

Check it out...

The Private Internship

An Art of Love
novel by Kitsy Clare

New adult romance,
book 2

(Not necessary to
read the first in the series to understand book 2)

Sugar’s not so
sweet and secrets can be deadly … especially with matters of the heart

Sienna’s
bestie, Harper warned her not to intern for famous bad boy artist, Casper
Mason. After all, he just fired Harper who helped Sienna get the interview. But
the moment Sienna sees Casper—or Caz—sweaty and practically shirtless and
swinging from chains while he works on his sculpture, she’s hooked. He’s the
richest, hottest artist in New York, and he lives in the fabulous Williamsburg
Sugar Factory. But he’s also an incorrigible game-player, who seems to relish
testing Sienna’s loyalty with a string of unsettling tests.

She
knows she should get away fast. But by the time Sienna sneaks into his locked
storage room and begins to unearth his dark and terrifying secret, she’s fallen
way too hard for the handsome, charismatic Caz.

Book reviewers are
saying:

"Beautiful.
Amazing. A fantastic read that left me wanting more." -XoXo Book Blog

"A
juicy read full of passion and magnetic chemistry that will have you hooked from
beginning to end." -From the Purple Matter Book Blog

Author Bio:

Kitsy Clare hails from Philadelphia and lives
in New York. A romantic at heart, she loves to write about the sexy intrigue of
the city, and particularly of the art world. She knows it well, having shown
her paintings here before turning to writing. Model Position, her new adult novella isabout artist Sienna and her friends. Living in a Bookworld says: “Beautifully written! We get to learn things about art
& painting, which is refreshing. A colorful story from a promising new
adult author.” The next in her series, Private
Internship launches on September 29 with Inkspell.

Kitsy loves to travel, draw, read romance, spec
fiction and teach writing workshops. She also writes YA as Catherine Stine. Her
futuristic thriller, Ruby’s Fire was
a YA finalist in the Next Generation Indie book awards. Fireseed One, its companion novel, was a finalist in YA and
Sci-Fi in the USA News International Book Awards, and an Indie Reader notable.
Her YA horror, Dorianna, launches
fall 2014 with Evernight Teen.